Last weekend, Michael Arrington at TechCrunch had some trouble with his cable just as a New York Times article featuring him hit the front page. So, after a ton of frustration, he Twittered about it. What he didn't expect was that his "tweet" would lead to a phone call, and a resolution. He wrote about it here.
Recently, regulars on Twitter have noticed a strange presence, a user by the name of @comcastcares. I assumed it was a joke. What's shocking is that Comcast, the big bad cable company, takes their customer relations very seriously, and has been monitoring blogs, tweets, and whatnot for months now, and trying to find the people on the other end, and reach out to them.
I decided I wanted to get to the bottom of this, so I sent a direct message to @comcastcares and asked if we could talk. I called a phone number and got Frank Eliason, who is part of their "National Customer Service Outreach," an effort which is new enough that he doesn't have a "proper" title yet.
Frank and I talk for a good bit about how this got started, where it's going, and how Comcast is actually leading the way in using social media to improve their customer service.
I never thought I'd be saying this, but if more companies did things like the cable company, maybe the world would become a better place to do business.
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